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Finally Dislodging My Brain
Apparently I was right that just solving the blog problem would get me back on track with the website, because I finally made some other progress since posting last night. I got the RSS set up, linked from the main website polarbearsummer.online for anyone who wants to follow that. I did a little bit of cleanup to the main landing page, added a few more links to the sidebar (especially since I'm primarily posting on bluesky instead of twitter right now), and felt pretty good about that.
Most importantly, I made a button! People have been sharing 88x31 pixel buttons linking to their site around on bluesky, and I figured I should join in. So last night I fired up aseprite for the first time, dug out my old wacom tablet (it was so dusty! I haven't used it since pre-covid), and got to work on a button! Thankfully, despite the small size, aseprite exports in social media friendly large sizes so I can post it without, say, twitter compression fucking it up.
I'm not really any more than an art dabbler, but I'm trying to embrace the handmade quality of doing all this stuff myself, so I don't mind that it looks a little crappy. My whole website looks a little crappy, I'm one person with two jobs and chronic health conditions doing this as my fourth hobby. We can extend ourselves a little grace on this Monday evening, I think.
This was inspired by Brianna Townsend's posts on bluesky about the buttons. The idea is that if you have a static website you can use the code next to the button on the main page to put my button somewhere on your site, where you'd collect buttons of all the websites you like, and I'm going to try to build up my own button gallery as I start following more sites. This is how the old internet used to work. A button is like a pinned RT, saying 'hey this person is neat.'
I'm really happy it's gotten me over the initial art block of doing something custom for the website. A new header for the main page is the biggest thing I need, but I'm pretty sure that's really beyond my ability and I'm still considering maybe commissioning someone for it in the future. Not right now, money's pretty tight these days, but until then I can do little odds and ends.
One of the ones I really want to do is make a custom set of polar bear mood icons for the mood section on the blog here. Dreamwidth has a few default options, but this rainbow kid is the only one that gets close to the classic Roshi's PaleFaces, the livejournal mood icons of my heart. If I had some small polar bear faces, though? I'd be happy with that. iykyk!!
The other thing I really want to do is get started on the static MiSTer page of the website, which will mostly be about plugging various old controllers into modern hardware to play old games with. This is the angle of the old games hobby I'm most sicko about, and I think it would be fun to log all of my various controllers with photos and brief descriptions of the hardware. I know MiSTer life isn't for everyone, but I do think there is a certain sort of treat in using original controllers on games and as far as 'real hardware' goes its the most affordable facet of collecting with arguably the biggest gain in terms of verisimilitude.
I'll need to take a little more time for that one, take photos of all my controllers and probably build an honest to god table for the information because tables used to be the fanciest thing you could do with HTML and I really want to make a big fuck-off table. But it's the next big to do on the website beyond maybe working on icon art.
Anyway, that's it for now. I'm hoping the next blog post will be less update focused and more just talking about this and that, if I do three technical posts in a row then I'm just making a blog about making websites, and god knows I'm the last person equipped or qualified to be doing that. I hope everyone has a good week, welcome to October, the coolest month (because of Halloween, and because it's my birthday on the 27th, and because it's Scorpio season soon, and because Fall is coming, hopefully)!
Most importantly, I made a button! People have been sharing 88x31 pixel buttons linking to their site around on bluesky, and I figured I should join in. So last night I fired up aseprite for the first time, dug out my old wacom tablet (it was so dusty! I haven't used it since pre-covid), and got to work on a button! Thankfully, despite the small size, aseprite exports in social media friendly large sizes so I can post it without, say, twitter compression fucking it up.
I'm not really any more than an art dabbler, but I'm trying to embrace the handmade quality of doing all this stuff myself, so I don't mind that it looks a little crappy. My whole website looks a little crappy, I'm one person with two jobs and chronic health conditions doing this as my fourth hobby. We can extend ourselves a little grace on this Monday evening, I think.
This was inspired by Brianna Townsend's posts on bluesky about the buttons. The idea is that if you have a static website you can use the code next to the button on the main page to put my button somewhere on your site, where you'd collect buttons of all the websites you like, and I'm going to try to build up my own button gallery as I start following more sites. This is how the old internet used to work. A button is like a pinned RT, saying 'hey this person is neat.'
I'm really happy it's gotten me over the initial art block of doing something custom for the website. A new header for the main page is the biggest thing I need, but I'm pretty sure that's really beyond my ability and I'm still considering maybe commissioning someone for it in the future. Not right now, money's pretty tight these days, but until then I can do little odds and ends.
One of the ones I really want to do is make a custom set of polar bear mood icons for the mood section on the blog here. Dreamwidth has a few default options, but this rainbow kid is the only one that gets close to the classic Roshi's PaleFaces, the livejournal mood icons of my heart. If I had some small polar bear faces, though? I'd be happy with that. iykyk!!
The other thing I really want to do is get started on the static MiSTer page of the website, which will mostly be about plugging various old controllers into modern hardware to play old games with. This is the angle of the old games hobby I'm most sicko about, and I think it would be fun to log all of my various controllers with photos and brief descriptions of the hardware. I know MiSTer life isn't for everyone, but I do think there is a certain sort of treat in using original controllers on games and as far as 'real hardware' goes its the most affordable facet of collecting with arguably the biggest gain in terms of verisimilitude.
I'll need to take a little more time for that one, take photos of all my controllers and probably build an honest to god table for the information because tables used to be the fanciest thing you could do with HTML and I really want to make a big fuck-off table. But it's the next big to do on the website beyond maybe working on icon art.
Anyway, that's it for now. I'm hoping the next blog post will be less update focused and more just talking about this and that, if I do three technical posts in a row then I'm just making a blog about making websites, and god knows I'm the last person equipped or qualified to be doing that. I hope everyone has a good week, welcome to October, the coolest month (because of Halloween, and because it's my birthday on the 27th, and because it's Scorpio season soon, and because Fall is coming, hopefully)!